Post station

“ The Foreign Station of the New York post-office stands out among the postal activities of the country [Pg 65] for it is the station at which are made up all the mails intended for foreign countries, with few exceptions, such as Canada. The superintendent of the station is Mr. Thomas J. Walters, who has been connected with it for many years. It is a busy place, particularly just before the departure of a steamer, when every effort is exerted to despatch all mail that can be crowded in, up to the very last minute. ”

“ With the peace which followed Waterloo the fighting times of the Packet Service came to an end, and in a few years the introduction of steam navigation began a completely new order of things. The Post Office gave up her packets, Falmouth was given up as a mail station, and the era of mail contracts began; and if we measure distance by time instead of mileage, the shrinkage of the world became more marked year by year. ”

“ This is only one way in which you can be independent of the ordinary mail service. I suspect that many persons who have not a Postal Guide in their possession are ignorant of the fact that a letter weighing 4 oz. may be handed in at a passenger station for immediate transmission by railway. This is a convenience to many people who have lost the post and are near a railway station. Then you can use the telephone to speed up your mail service. You can telephone a letter to a post office, and it will be taken down in writing there and despatched by express delivery. ”

“ Travellers from North and East to the West of England and vice versa are aware that the Bristol Joint Great Western and Midland station is a busy railway centre. At a recent Christmas season, there was much remark on the part of the railway passengers with respect to the platforms being blocked up with barrows containing mails and the large stack of parcel baskets to be met with at every point. Said one traveller, "It's all blooming Post Office on the platform and no room for travellers to get about." ”

“ The sorting of mails would be performed at every station instead of at a few. Incoming country mails would be taken from the bags at the railway termini, and the same bags refilled with outgoing country mails, thus avoiding needless carriage to the Post Office and back. No bags at all would be used for local mails, the steel carriers themselves answering that purpose.
At every tube terminal a post-office clerk would be stationed, so that the mails would never for an instant be out of post-office control. ”

“ Every detail of the work is plotted; nothing is left to chance. At a certain hour and at a certain minute every clerk engaged in the same distribution at the same station ties out for the same office or route, and likewise at the pouching rack the pouches are closed, locked, and despatched according to a fixed schedule. If the pouch has to be carried from the rack to the truck a given number of feet, a time allowance is made. At a set time the truck that conveys the pouches to the station whence the train is to depart must leave. ”

“ When the mails are ready, they are sent from the Post-Office in various ways. Those for one or two country roads are sent to a local railway station, and taken in charge by the railway guard, who drops the bags at the different points on the line according to their address; others are carried by mail gigs under one or more private contractors, while the rest are taken [Pg 237] by country-walking postmen, who make certain journeys during the day, returning in the evening with the letters and bags they have gathered during their travels. ”

“ The control of the service in districts served by railway rests entirely in the hands of the railway companies. The postal administration takes no part directly in its management, but co-operates with the companies by affording certain small facilities in regard to parcels. For example, on payment of the usual delivery fee of 25 centimes a parcel may be delivered from the railway station to the local post office, where it will be retained in the poste restante. In districts not reached by the railway or their agents, the management of the service falls on the postal administration. ”

“ In 1862, the Pneumatic Conveyance Company set up a branch of their operations at the Euston Square Station, London. The Post-Office took advantage of this new mode of conveyance to send the mail-bags to the North-Western District Office from this important railway terminus. The work is, of course, accomplished with marvellous expedition. The machinery for other localities is in course of construction, and may ultimately extend all over the metropolis, to the supercession, as far as the Post-Office is concerned, of the existing mail-vans. ”

“ These several improvements the respective parties interested are disposed to effect, and which any impelling motive, such as the establishment of a regular mail packet station, may induce them immediately to undertake. The accomplishment of these works would render Portishead a most eligible station. It is protected from weather, is a safe [Pg 146] anchorage, would have ample depth of water at any state of the tide, the landing would be instant on arrival, and it would be supplied with every convenience and accommodation for passengers. ”

“ Or these 100 farmers must hitch up and take to town packages that the carrier could have taken for them with the outfit he already has. The [71] time and labor saved the 4,000,000 families on rural routes would amount to many times the present postal deficit.
It is only natural that farmers should be especially desirous of a modern parcels post, because, as already stated, the express service stops with the railway station. Hence the farmer has no express service that reaches to him as have the people of towns and cities. ”

“ Every one meets at the railroad station. They are all as smart looking as can be, there is no sign of "rough" clothes anywhere, though nothing in the least like a jewel case or parasol is to be seen. At the end of somewhere between eight and eighteen hours, they arrive at a shed which sits at the edge of the single track and is labelled Dustville Junction, and hurrying down the narrow platform is their host. ”

“ Outside the newly made-up train on either side straggled a collection of grimy, sand-blown Indians—mainly women—peddling queer, uncertain foods from earthen pots or battered tin cans that were in great demand among the sophisticated natives while, on a higher plane of dignity, a fat, placid Cholo sent the first native urchin on whom his eye fell 80 into the station presently to deliver to you a bottle of unripe, bilious beer as warm as the hot shadow in which it had been kept. ”

“ But let us look on at another comedy, for which the scene shifts to the railroad station at Albuquerque where the long stone platform is colorless and deserted. You have always on picture postcards seen it filled with [162] Indians. There is not one in sight. Wait though until ten minutes before the California limited is due. Out of the nowhere appear dozens of vividly costumed Navajos and Hopis; their blankets and long braids woven with red cloth, their headbands and beads and silver ornaments fill the platform with color like a flower display. ”

“ The august sanitary junta sat augustly at Guayaquil. From this port doctor’s station to Guayaquil was some distance. To telegraph one made one’s report, then it was paddled across the muddy tide-water creek in a dugout; then it was carried on foot across the island—for this strip of beach and home of the straggling black pigs was but a portion of an island of some size—and then across more water in a dugout and there was a telegraph station! Naturally all this took time. The port boat put back and the captain returned to his quarters. ”

“ For miles and miles after leaving Isleta, a quite large settlement where there are many Indians and also many tourists, you go on and on and on over an easy gradually ascending road not unlike the long Platte Valley drive, but much more uninhabited. The once dangerous fording of the Puerco River is no longer a barrier to motorists, as there is a splendid new bridge that takes you smoothly over. From time to time you come to a few adobe huts or a lonely little packing-box railroad station, but your road stretches uneventfully on, until Laguna. ”

“ Then there was the fascination of the great high-way—the thin white line, sometimes straight, sometimes winding—which was human and alive in a way that a railway track can never be. Men were not then simply driven or shot into places; they drove through places; and they touched life at every point of the road.
The Post Office is, however, not administered by poets and artists, but by men of the type of Thomas Hasker. And to men like him the coming of the mail train was a matter for official rejoicing. ”

“ The weight of mails to be conveyed is usually insufficient to warrant the provision of a special train, and the Post Office is therefore compelled, as far as possible, to make use of such trains as may be run for other traffic, endeavouring to obtain such modification in the times and working as will make them of the greatest advantage to the mail service without destroying their utility for general traffic. ”

“ If such cases have occurred, it must be under extraordinary circumstances, for the Post Office itself has power to prevent such occurrences. There is nothing to prevent their sending their mail bags, as a parcel, by any train they like. They may [464] have them carried, if they please, by a goods train, at 6d. per ton per mile; and that goods train will travel at least as fast as the old mail coach. A mail guard, with his bag of letters, may take his second-class ticket and walk into the railway carriage, with his bag, like any other passenger. ”

“ When the stations at which pouches are caught are within a mile or two of each other, the greatest activity is needed to assort the mail between stations, to avoid carrying mail by destination and subjecting it to considerable delay before its delivery by a railway post-office on the train to be met at a point perhaps many miles ahead. ”

“ On this route we can bring out clearly the fact that in many parts of Great Britain and Ireland the Post Office, in spite of mail trains and ingenious mechanical contrivances, is still dependent on quite primitive means for conducting its business. Moreover, directly we get away from the main lines of traffic, considerations of weather still affect postal operations almost as much as they used to do in the old coaching days. Let us address a letter to the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse, which is situated to the north of the island of Unst in Shetland. ”

“ In fact, the book post service is one so different in its character and objects from that to which the parcel arrangements of the [451] railway companies are adapted, that it may fairly be assumed it would hardly exist at all, but for the extensive facilities for its development which the Post Office possesses. ”

“ The Mauretania will probably reach New York on most of her voyages sooner than a passenger will travel the length of the British Isles. And that 82is simply because we use the old means of conveyance over a considerable portion of the distance. The Post Office owes much to the railway companies for the advances made in the quality of the rolling stock and in the condition of the permanent way. It was always possible to sort letters after a fashion while the train was in motion. ”

“ The most comprehensive conception of the practical working of the postal-car system, can be formed in a railway post-office from forty to sixty feet in length; with this in view, we will make a trip in one. A permit to ride in the car, signed by the superintendent of the division of the service, is necessary to allow us the privilege; and it is also required of clerks belonging to other lines. This rule is necessary, in order that the clerks may perform their work uninterruptedly and correctly; and also to exclude unauthorized persons from mail apartments. ”

“ In these cities all the transportation of mail between the railroad stations and the post offices as well as in the collection and delivery services is performed by automobiles owned by the Post Office Department itself. ”

“ The service for the Government is performed in an apartment car fifteen feet long, and closed pouch service, four trains carrying mail daily, except Sunday, giving an actual return to the railroad of three and a half cents per mile run, or about one passenger fare at three cents per mile although the Government demands the use of a 15-foot car fitted up as a post office in which a postal clerk is carried free, and this car must be lighted, heated and kept in repair, and carried over the route each way daily, except Sunday. ”

“ In any case, a postal service should be limited to parcels of moderate size and weight, because the Post Office, as at present organized, is for the most part adapted to the handling of packets which can be delivered by foot-messengers. In rural [Pg 332] districts this is almost universally the rule. [666] It is frequently necessary in the towns to separate entirely the parcel post traffic from the ordinary light letter post traffic (except in those parts of the service where the parcel post traffic is very restricted) , to provide a separate staff, and to furnish different equipment. ”

“ Perceiving that residence at Brighton, and therefore custom to the railway, would be increased by every addition to postal facilities between that town and the metropolis, I induced the directors to make an offer to the Post Office for the conveyance of a mail by every train without any additional expense to that department. ”